A key environmental policy to have almost a million electric vehicles on Irish roads by 2030 will be a “huge challenge” unless the Government incentivises and supports dealing with the oldest polluting cars, while increasing the charging infrastructure nationwide.
A new report by Arup and economist Jim Power on reducing light fleet carbon emissions to achieve Government targets, states in order to deal with this older legacy fleet, help will be required for those with the least economic capacity to make the biggest change.
The independent report, which was commissioned for The Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI ), says this requires more investment - not just at the top end of the market - to remain fair and equitable if Ireland is to provide all commuters with viable transport options.
Of equal importance is the urgent need to create a second-hand EV fleet, according to the report.
The age profile of the national fleet has led to the continued use of older polluting vehicles with 31.1 per cent of vehicles being Euro 4 (pre-2011 ) or older (700,429 cars ). Analysis within the report shows that removal of all these cars and replacing them with EVs would reduce carbon emissions by 875,000 tonnes, which is the equivalent of planting more than 1.1 billion trees.
While the Government is leading the way by currently requiring all its fleets to be replaced with electric vehicles, this could be expedited by requiring a turn over every two or three years.
Ireland, which is a right-hand drive market, has a slower and smaller supply chain than most other European markets, with some 120,000 new car sales a year (pre-Covid-19 ), and an average car fleet age of nine years (2021 ).
With the majority of motorists being used vehicle buyers, there is currently three times as many used vehicles being sold as new vehicles, with an insignificant second-hand electric vehicle market. The creation of this secondary market can only happen via a vibrant overall new car market.
The reports states the ambition to sell nearly a million electric vehicles by 2030 is “extremely challenging”.
Supply disruptions wrought by Covid-19, Brexit and the global chip supply shortage, combined with potential rare mineral shortages keeping battery prices high, has further delayed the availability of electric vehicles.
The report also highlights that the European Commission aims to have 30 million EVs on the road by 2030 and estimates that three million public chargers will be needed to support them. By the same measure, Ireland would need 100,000 public chargers, with all new being fast chargers to serve the proposed one million EVs here by the same date.
Currently there are 1,900 chargers installed at 800 sites across the island of Ireland and with the current number of 47,000 EVs on Irish roads the number of charging points falls far short of the 4,700 realistically needed to serve these.
To achieve this investment in public charging infrastructure, a broader approach is required to include policies on charging at home, as well as diversifying the distribution of fast charge points across the country to ensure charging installations support a complete and robust network across the country.
There is scope to integrate private market investment into charging infrastructure to speed up the roll out process and to off-set the capital intensity required to build a wide spread charger network.
